Slaughterhouse Prayer

By John King

When a boy realises the grown-ups are killing animals and that he has been eating their bodies, he gives up meat. But should he share the truth and break another child's heart? As a youth he wants to believe in the ability of words and peaceful protest to end the slaughter, while struggling to resist a desire for revenge.

Now a disillusioned man trying to rebuild his life, he must choose one of two paths. Acceptance means security, but those meat-industry adverts keep taunting him and some familiar insults - smelly pig, dirty cow, chick-chick-chicken - fill his head.

Slaughterhouse Prayer deals in human invention and our treatment of non-human animals, the manipulation of language and the nature of innocence. Society's pecking order is challenged as the story moves to its margins and beyond. A book of dreams, where visions are more real than reality and sentimentality is a strength, it asks a series of questions. Can a person honestly kill without emotion? Could a vegan soldier stay professional and humane? And will we ever confront the terror that surrounds us?

• Language: English
• Publisher: London Books
• Release date: Apr 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9781912924806

John King

John King is cofounder and senior partner of CultureSync. He has trained and coached more than 25,000 people over the last 20 years.

Book preview

Meek

WONDERFUL WORLD

THE MAN MOVED along the ridge, his eyes focused on the way forward, heart tapping out a marching beat, and when the path narrowed and the slope to his right steepened, threatening to kill him if he lost his nerve and tumbled, he didn’t slow down but instead walked faster – in control of his life for the first time in much too long. And once the fall was behind him he kept up this quicker pace, knowing the harder he pushed his body the stronger his mind would become. He was little Michael Tanner, a boy full of dreaming; Mickey Moo, a youth doing his best to fight his anger and believe in the power of words; plain old Tanner, a disillusioned, middle-aged adult who saw this long-distance walk as some sort of rebirth. He liked the idea of being born a second, third, maybe even a fourth time.

It was still early in the day, not yet ten o’clock, but he was already soaked in sweat. The sun was scorching the land, salt forming fractals on a tattered Subhumans T-shirt, the Munch-like skull cracked and gasping. He imagined the heat falling in pancake layers, its pulse linking to his heartbeat, and as he did this he willed more blood into his brain, doing his best to drown the last dregs of depression. Too much thinking had definitely damaged his health.

It was a week since the sunshine had broken into his flat and reminded him that he was one of the lucky ones. His body and soul were his own, not controlled or denied by businessmen, politicians, priests. He had to be strong and stand tall. It was Sunday morning and he ignored the temptation to roll over and savour this surge of positive energy, instead hurrying out of bed and opening windows and filling the bath and scrubbing his skin and shaving his face and cleaning a sink’s worth of dishes with a lemon-scented liquid. Seven days later and here he was on a cross-country journey, revelling in the incredible space, silence and peace.

The land began to rise and he firmed his boots inside steps cut out across the centuries, straining muscles as he followed the hunters and gatherers and shepherds and soldiers and pilgrims and all the other creatures who had created this path. His heart thumped faster and he was out of breath when he reached the top of the slope. Stopping, he leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees. Bile churned and he thought he was going to puke up the breakfast he’d eaten two hours earlier.

Baked beans on toast – cooked on a portable stove outside his tent – was meant to balance the drink he’d had in a village pub the night before. The Stag did a nice pint of cider, and he’d tried the perry as well, welcomed by locals who made sure they told him about the spirits haunting the ridge. He listened to their stories and played along. It had taken a while to find his tent at closing time, but he was relaxed and unafraid, felt a flush of happiness now as he remembered the pub, which only lasted a moment.

He was suddenly light-headed and dizzy and seemed to be swaying, his mind numb so he hardly knew where he was or what he was doing. For a split second he thought he was falling, that he hadn’t made it across that narrow stretch of path, but then his life flashed back up from the fields below in a rush of euphoria that raced into his feet and legs and filled his torso and finally his head. The nausea was gone and his mind was clear. He felt fantastic.

Stretching his spine and rolling a tight neck, he continued walking, and it wasn’t long before his rhythm returned, and this was so smooth and natural he felt as if his feet were barely touching the ground. When a breeze brushed his face he was tempted to lift his legs up and let the current carry him into the sky where he would fly with the birds, an albatross of a man, cumbersome in comparison yet strangely graceful, dipping down as he traded an ocean for grass. He was sailing through space, a weightless adventurer circling his own blue-marble planet, a purist feeding on the cleanest air, captain of his very own spaceship. Coming to a wider plateau he slowed down as he passed through thousands of dandelions and daisies, their yellow-and-white heads the stars from last night.

He had positioned his tent near a copse that shielded it from other walkers but gave him a view over the surrounding country-side. Back from the pub, he had sat in front of it eating cereal from a plastic mug, the clouds clearing so the sky was clear, the moon nearly full. Amazed by the number of stars that were visible, he had picked out the brightest one and stared at it for ages, then searched for meteors burning up as they entered the earth’s atmosphere. When he was a boy he had done the same thing, and not so far from here. It made sense that the ancients looked to the heavens for their gods.

The drinkers in the village swore there was a beast on the ridge, as well as the ghost of a traveller and the spirit of a horse. It would be dangerous to fall asleep. But he had always wanted to believe in fairy tales and knew some of the area’s history. Pagans had built stone circles and buried their dead in barrows, Christians following with churches and graveyards. Their sacrifices crossed over. He had listened for the roar of the beast, the call of a man, the clatter of hooves. He imagined families searching for their loved ones, unaware that they too were dead. Small creatures watched from the darkness. A single human would be a problem, but he’d love to see a ghost. He couldn’t let his mind wander. Not last night and not today. He continued walking. It was forty-five minutes before he stopped.

At a high point on the track he decided he’d earned a rest and the chance to properly appreciate the scenery. His rucksack puffed up dust when he dropped it to the ground, his shirt separating from his skin so he felt the coldness of the sweat. He wiped his face with a hanky and squeezed out the water, watched brown earth turn black. Moving away from the path he sat on a ledge padded with soft grass, legs dangling over the side of the hill. The slope was gentler than elsewhere, but if he went over he would die. He was perched on the side of an older world. A man on the edge.

Shading his eyes with his right hand he scanned the fields, found green patches sectioned by bulging hedges and open ditches and strips of piled stone, a range of shades and colours and textures sewn together in uneven blocks, and these fields ran into clumps of oak heavy with leaves, smaller trees he couldn’t identify on a hill three or more miles away. There were meadows and hollows and tangled brambles that had never been cut, mustard shining bright yellow, two brown oblongs of freshly dug soil on either side, black triangles hopping as birds searched for seed. A crooked path led to a crooked barn, a box he hoped had been used for hay. Chalk pressed through banks near the horizon, as if a giant had worn out the elbows of his jacket. There were no houses and no people. It was the perfect picture. A brilliant painting.

He squinted and made out fifty or so white dots, guessed they were lambs and ewes, quickly shifted his eyes towards the long grass at the foot of the hill, a home for rabbits and mice and badgers and the deer that maybe came across from the woods late in the day.

There was a fairy mound behind him and he eased back, sunk his head into a ready-made pillow. His body relaxed, but the scenery was fixed in his head, and he thought about Paul Nash and his brother John, who had recorded the First World War and painted English fields when it was over. The mechanised killing had affected Paul so badly he’d suffered from depression for the rest of his life. The younger war artists tended to show the slaughter of men through the ruined land over which they had fought, and despite the horror their work was inspiring. Nash was a romantic. A modernist.

He felt the grass pushing against his hands, a miniature jungle where insect armies patrolled in silence, unseen by spotter planes and bombers, and he wondered what tipped certain people over the side into depression while others thrived. He covered his eyes with a forearm as beetles roamed, dragonflies circled, butterflies flapped, ladybirds balanced on green blades. Last night’s cider had been cold and refreshing and he could have done with a pint now. Drink lifted him up, but there were negatives. One pint too many could shorten his temper. He was fine talking about meat and dairy, explaining his veganism, listening to other views, but there had been a couple of times last year when he’d lost control. Every meat eater’s excuse was predictable. The jokes were unoriginal and had turned from pathetic to insulting. A lack of respect was enough. He remembered his punches connecting and heard the breaking of glass as a grasshopper snapped a twig, another insect soldier left to rot on the streets of a grateful nation.

This ridge ran through land he had spent time in as a boy and a youth, and he thought of that chunk of life since his early twenties – a blur of work, love, marriage, divorce, sickness, death. It was five years since he’d seen his ex-wife and two since he’d been made redundant. He had made mistakes, but seeing the two people he loved most suffer and eventually die had hit him hard. There had been no escape, nothing he could do to save his parents’ lives. This just made all the unnecessary cruelty in the world seem much worse. The daily routine of work and then caring for them had blocked out the horror he’d tried to confront when he was younger, and this returned with a vengeance once he was alone and unemployed. For a while he’d wished he could just go to sleep and never wake up.

He jolted as a stun-gun flashed, the electric shock opening his eyes. A knife shone. He sat up and saw a silver cross floating across the sky. He waved, stood up and tried again, using both arms, moving them side to side above his head, but couldn’t see if the glider pilot responded. He was always amazed by the miracle of flight, didn’t need to know what was inside the person’s head. There was no more room for arguments.

When he got home he was going to live a different sort of life. He would tune into his radio and TV and lose himself in their wisdom, embrace the biggest of the group-minds, surf the internet and agree with thousands of new friends, accept the baby-talk of his leaders. He was going to laugh at all those unfunny comedians who had traded general humour for specific targets, treat news as twenty-four-hour entertainment, revel in his decency as he agreed with the dominant view and nodded his head. There were special offers and bonus points to save, trivia and the intricacies of endless upgrades to master, and he would exercise and become healthy and ask no more questions. Feeling angry had done him no good. He didn’t want to be sad.

Heaving his rucksack onto his back, he adjusted the straps until it was comfortable. A column of light appeared, as if Turner had added a stroke of white paint to the scene, drawing his eyes back to the sky. It was a single small cloud responsible. The mothers of Nash and Turner had both died in asylums and he wondered what this meant. He felt as powerless as they would have done, and for the first time in his life it was a comfort. He was a small man who could change nothing, so why bother trying? Everything happened for a reason. That’s what he had heard.

The man known as Tanner started to walk, picking up speed and loving the thump in his chest and the rhythm in his wrists and the heat of the sun on his head and arms, and it wasn’t long before his mind was clearing and his spirit soared. He was a tiny speck on a huge canvas. A boy and a youth and a man – marching together if not in time. Water filled his eyes. He wasn’t sure if it was sweat or tears, but he did know that he was happy. Nothing could hurt him. It was a wonderful world.

Hunters cornered the youth on a quiet country lane and kicked the fuck out of him. Two terrier-men with pickaxe handles stood in front, a shotgun-carrying farmer behind, thick hawthorn hedges and nettle-filled ditches boxing the lad in as they stepped forward to deliver a lesson that would never be forgotten. The silly bugger had become separated from his friends and it was their lucky day. It was their right to manage the land as they saw fit, and hunting was an important part of this, as well as a basic freedom. They really did hate these hunt saboteurs.

For some reason the youth kept grinning, but they’d soon wipe the smile off his face. He mooed like a cow. Maybe he was a bit slow in the head. Mickey treated them to the chorus of ‘Sabotage The Hunt’ by The Business. Or was he taking the piss? Now he was barking. It didn’t matter. There was nowhere to run. No escape. Christmas had come early.

Their own faces were flushed red, skin raw and laced with tiny veins, eyes bright with the joys of the bloodsport brigade. Townies had no respect for the countryside. These sabs were anarchist scum who wanted to destroy traditions that had existed for hundreds of years, a bunch of layabouts with nothing better to do with their lives than worry about animals. When the youth started to oink they hesitated, felt uneasy suddenly, but knew that this was a golden opportunity.

Mickey was nineteen and no weakling, but the men closing in on him were older and used to violence. He punched the first one in the mouth and knocked him backwards, which seemed to outrage his friend, who probably expected him to cower like one of the foxes they spent their spare time terrorising. Or at least keep to the non-violence code of the ALF. But Mickey was different. He was no pacifist. Neither was he going to give his attackers the satisfaction of trying to get away. The odds only made him more determined to stand and fight. He was big, strong and angry.

He whacked the second terrier-man on the nose, heard a crack and saw blood. This pleased him. He did a donkey impression. These men killed rabbits as well as foxes, chased down hares and all sorts, probably worked with the badger baiters and blinded babies with acid. He hit the first one again, nearly putting him down, preferred a physical fight to insults and mental violence. He had been trying to turn the other cheek, listening to the more experienced hunt saboteurs and animal-rights activists, but this was self-defence. He’d forgotten the farmer, though, who was cunning and patient and moving in from behind. The shotgun’s butt connected with the back of his head.

Human beings could justify anything. They gave speeches and delivered sermons, debated and decided, wrote billions of words down on paper and into computers, produced reports and books, passed complex laws only a well-paid elite was meant to understand, boasted about clarity, invented rules of engagement and humane slaughter, consulted friends and enemies, shook hands and slapped backs and swore eternal loyalty, lectured the masses on civilised behaviour and the rights of the individual, the limitations placed on interrogation and torture, the conditions of confinement, the double-speak of rape, castration, murder. Mickey knew it was bollocks.

People loved an easy target. The more defenceless their victim, the greater the violence. Humans rarely fought fair. Too many of them were bullies dealing in physical, verbal and mental abuse. They preyed on the young and they preyed on the old, closed in fast when they saw their chance.

Mickey was on his knees, dazed and unable to dodge the first kick that crashed into his face. He moved his hands up to protect his eyes, a second blow connecting, his jaw taking the full force. The third kick came from the opposite direction, a heavy boot to the back of his head. He felt stones on the side of his face as he fell forward, scared as he imagined the shell protecting his brain cracking, a coconut split by a hammer. He tried to curl into a ball and cradle his skull, widening his palms and stretching his fingers, but the next kick was to his balls, the pain filling his mouth with vomit. He pulled his legs up tight and tucked his head in the best he could.

The terrier-men kept going, kicking him up and down his body, taking their time as they picked weak spots. This was a methodical attack and they taunted him as they worked, told him about the fox cubs they killed and how they ripped the hearts out of the mothers for trophies, that badgers made a racket and thrashed about when their eyes were burnt out, the money they made on dog fights, the rabbits they caught, the way they treated the hounds and the fact the courts would release a hunt supporter who committed GBH but give a non-violent saboteur five years for denting a car. He was a fucking idiot to think he could ever change anything.

This was the countryside and they could do what they wanted, and they kept hurting him for these same reasons – because they could and because they wanted to – at least until they became tired, huffing and puffing and pausing. Mickey was semi-conscious. He hoped they were done.

They started using their pickaxe handles next. Heavy wood battered his flesh. They said it was like tenderising meat and laughed. The sound of the blows was hollow and repetitive. They grunted and groaned, the punches he’d landed driving them on. But the animal impressions had spooked them, if only for a few seconds. There was something not quite right about this one. They didn’t want him getting back up.

When they paused again, Mickey peered through his fingers and found the farmer staring at him, the shotgun resting on his hip. Their eyes connected and the man raised the barrels so they were pointing at Mickey’s head. For a moment he thought he was going to die and was scared, and later he would decide that without the law to protect him he would have done, but the farmer was never going to risk a murder charge and prison. Instead he lifted the shotgun so it was leaning against his right shoulder, as if he was a sentry on guard duty, told the terrier-men to stop now, they didn’t want to kill the lad. That was enough. A warning to all those other interfering cunts.

The terrier-men dragged Mickey to the side of the lane, stones cutting his hands and neck, releasing him at the top of a ditch and pushing with their boots so he rolled into it, over and over like he used to do in the park when he was a child, told he was going to be sick if he wasn’t careful, that he would end up with a headache that would last for hours. He didn’t feel the stinging nettles and thorns as he rolled, and at the bottom he rocked side to side, riding a seesaw, landing on his back.

A voice was telling him to fuck off and never come back. The words echoed and died. Footsteps crunched. The sound faded. He was alone.

The water in the bottom of the ditch was thick with decaying plants, a sugary sweetness softening the rancid smell, and being down here meant his kicking was over. The solution was clammy against his skin, a mass of rotting leaves and bark, a soapy compost heap. The slime was warm and he had that feeling of climbing into bed cold and exhausted and knowing he could sleep late in the morning. He rested for a minute, didn’t want to hang around, tried to move but couldn’t. His body was stiff. Maybe he had been paralysed. It was hard to think straight.

The water was soaking through his clothes and running into his ears, wrapping itself around him as he closed his eyes. There was a ringing in his head that became a shrill whistle before returning as a steady throb. His body was starting to ache. The reality of what had just happened sent a delayed shock through his system. He had been fighting for survival on the lane, hadn’t expected more than a few punches and kicks, realised he could have died up there, and that he might be seriously injured. Again, he tried to move. Again, he couldn’t.

His chest heaved and he was starting to panic, knew he had to calm himself down, move to a better place. The water on his face came from a sprinkler in a huge glasshouse, a gentle mist that floated in the air, settling on the leaves of palm trees and banana plants. He was inside the protective walls of his favourite botanical gardens and safe from predators. True, this ditch was home to spaceship pods and time-travelling seeds, long genetic threads that slipped out from under his fingernails and merged with the spawn of reptiles, but he had read a lot of science fiction as a child and didn’t need to worry. He heard a frog croak and realised he was in a prehistoric pool, muddy and clueless, branded pond life, fins wedged into amputated arm sockets, legs tapering into a rudder. His attempt to escape had failed. He was a subspecies non-human beaten to a pulp. His brain was bleeding.

Perhaps he had been sedated and taken by ambulance to a hospital where the nurses were coaxing him through the initial trauma, doing their best to bring him back to some form of life. There were dedicated doctors from every part of the world keen to help. He had wet the bed and was ashamed, didn’t want to wear the nappy the nurses brought, and he realised that the chemicals they were injecting weren’t going to make him better, could only ease his pain.

He opened his eyes. Skeletons linked arms high above his head, bones turning to branches and creating a canopy, a natural dome that held in the moisture. Millions of brilliant green leaves slow-danced on brown limbs, balancing billions of teardrops. He didn’t want to die in a ditch. It would be like drowning in a puddle. He could see beads running along the surface of the leaves, shaking loose and falling into his face. His ears were thick with glue. He was stuck. It took huge shots of willpower to climb out of the gutter, a superhuman determination to stand tall and plan ahead.

When he finally managed to sit up he tried to shake the goo from his hands, but it was sticky, elastic and congealing, and he stopped. Moving to the side of the ditch he cried out. Leaning against a log he held his fingers up and found them webbed with mucus. His ears were mushy and he tilted his head left and right so the water could run out, pulling himself straight, groaning as he did so. Looking across to the other bank he saw a path of crushed nettles where he’d rolled down the slope. His stings and cuts were starting to hurt, and when he put a hand to his face and wiped at the green gunk it was laced with red.

It was the sheer unfairness of life that forced him to his feet and sent him scrambling up the bank and out of the ditch and into the lane where he stumbled and fell. It took him a while to recover, but he was upright and swaying and finally steady. He was bleeding more heavily now, the blood in his eyes and covering his clothes and hands. Mickey was worried, but still noticed how the attack had left little impression on the land. Out of sight and out of mind. This was why the hunters and butchers could keep on killing.

He looked both ways and it really was as if nothing had happened. The nettles would recover and anyway, who could guess what that flattened path in the ditch meant? His beating only existed in his injuries and the memories of those involved.

He was dizzy, the pain sharper, and when he put a hand on his chest he recoiled, sure he had broken some ribs. His head would need stitching. Yet he had been lucky. His attackers had held back. They would have killed him if he was a fox or a rabbit. Mickey Moo gritted his teeth and hobbled down the lane, wincing as he went, and once he was mended he swore he was going to find those three men and get even, and the knowledge that he would keep his promise drove him on.

It was the boy’s grandfather who told him about the animals – the non-human animals. Michael was nine years old, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, following the flow of the old man’s words, the gruff but musical sounds that chopped into each other and created films in his head, and while he took in the meaning he couldn’t stop staring at the creases on that leathery face opposite. He remembered dead leaves raked and stacked in his local park, brittle skeletons inside green wax crumbling to brown, black and yellow. He bounced back to the fossils he’d seen at the seaside the summer before. Broken rocks held the bones of small fish and birds. A pixie danced, squashed in slate. He wasn’t sure if this last fossil was real or not, asked the man behind the counter. Did he want it to be? Michael nodded. The shopkeeper said in that case it is. And cheap at the price.

Grandad Pop eased forward in his chair, creases catching the glow coming off the bulb above his head. Michael knew about the canals on Mars from his comics and the light turned to liquid silver, and each time Pop moved it swished along the grooves and ran into ditches that linked to the main channels. The last natives survived here, sheltering from week-long electrical storms, only coming to the surface when they were over. Martians loved to visit the craters where their ancestors had lived, wishing themselves across the sand and rock, and when they were travelling at the right speed these half-spirits were invisible to the mechanical insects patrolling the planet. Hiding in the darker valleys were chainmail frogs and dogs with human heads, paper-clawed birds and purple mouse girls, all of them hunted by steel-head controllers and their bronze spider regiments. Robot assassins hid in the tiny holes that dotted the deserts. He followed the canals back to his grandfather’s mouth.

Pop was explaining how the smallest souls could find their way into a building – sliding down chimneys, climbing through letter-boxes, swimming along pipes. Just because he couldn’t see them it didn’t mean they weren’t there. It was the same as electricity. They couldn’t see it, could they, but electricity existed. Spirits lived in the wires that helped them see at night. There was probably a pixie sitting inside that bulb on the ceiling right now. Michael raised his eyes and felt a thrill run through his body. The kettle whistled and Pop winked and ruffled his hair, stood up and left the room, taking his bottle of beer with him to the kitchen.

There was a clank as crumpets were placed on a tray, the scratch of a match as the grill was lit. Staring into the fireplace, Michael watched coal, wood and paper burn, most of the smoke leaving through the chimney, but it hadn’t been cleaned for a long time and the smell hung in the air. This was his second night at Elm Cottage, and it had felt strange being so far from his parents at first, but he was glad he’d come to stay. Pop’s brother had died and he was clearing his belongings out of the family home. There was some of their parents’ stuff here as well. Pop wanted to get it done and return to London as soon as he could.

Elm Cottage was three miles from its nearest neighbour, next to a country lane that nobody seemed to use. Michael had never known anywhere so quiet. Dad said Pop had always found it a sad and lonely place, leaving when he joined the army and settling in London when he was demobbed. The silence made him think too much. And there was something on Michael’s mind as well, lingering from last night when they were sitting at the kitchen table eating the pie Pop had made.

Michael liked pies. The pastry was the best bit, along with the gravy inside, and while he never thought too much about the filling he had noticed the difference in this one and mentioned the mushrooms. Pop asked what sort of pies he normally ate. Michael had to think – meat, chicken, steak and kidney. He cut two chips in half, lined them up on his fork, dipped this in ketchup and put it in his mouth. Pop said he didn’t eat animals. Didn’t eat meat. There was a pause. He mentioned someone called Harry King, his voice trailing off.

A short silence followed, broken when Pop had thought about the beer loosening his tongue and tried to change the subject, asking Michael about his train journey again – they had already talked about this on the way back from the station – if he’d been worried travelling on his own without Mum or Dad. It was a long trip. Michael was chewing so he didn’t reply, knew not to speak with food in his mouth, but he was remembering how the houses thinned out and that he’d seen a canal with locks and then woods and hills in the distance, sheep and cows in fields and these huge pigs in a dusty area with huts to live in and bales of straw to eat, and as he thought about this he kept wondering what Pop had meant, because he didn’t eat animals either.

A day had passed and his grandfather was coming back into the living room, placing a tray on the table in front of the couch, crumpets piled up next to a jar of jam and a pot of tea. He poured as Michael helped himself, the boy adding strawberry jelly before sitting back and raising his knees to form a platform for his plate. They watched the fire as they ate and every so often Michael glanced at his grandfather, studying the way the light moved across his face, and then looking up at the lightbulb. A pixie was waiting for them to go to bed so he could leave his glass ball and sit on the couch and watch the fire die down. Michael asked Pop what would happen to the planet if all the people moved to Mars. The old man made a show of considering the question.

Well, the meek were supposed to inherit the earth, so they would take over and do a better job of running the place. Yes, it would be great if everyone left for Mars, or somewhere further away, just kept on going, went and lived in a different universe they couldn’t come back from to ruin things again. Michael didn’t know who the meek were and Pop tried to explain. They were the humble souls. Quiet and shy. Didn’t want any bother. Human and non-human animals. Michael laughed. Humans weren’t animals. Pop frowned. Yes, they were. And because the meek were